A few days ago I was invited to talk at an after school club to discuss growing to like yourself during those uncomfortable teenage years and to learn to love the body you’re in; a tough job for anyone, let alone for children. The group was small, only about 7-8 teens in size, and the majority were girls. Despite getting used to the task of public speaking, and last week giving a speech in front of a large room full of adults at our book launch, I found myself nervous, with a stomach full of metaphorical moths, as I remembered exactly how I felt at the age most of the young people in the room are now.
I chatted a bit about our book, and how my eating problems started in my teens. I spoke of how I was such an anxious child that in school I’d be frightened to even take my blazer off in school on a hot day in case anyone said anything about my shirt. I scanned the room and recognised the same fidgety wrists attached to some of the girls in the room, pulling their jumpers nervously over their hands and pinching their lips together in case words dare fall out. I tried to let them know that I was just like them.
We extended the conversation, when a few felt brave enough to ask me questions, to discuss how social media (in particular Instagram) makes them feel. Most said it didn’t make them anxious, which I suspect might’ve been to save face in front of their peers, as findings suggest that children spending more than 3 hours a day on social media are twice as likely to suffer from poor mental health. Studies have also shown that a child’s immersion in a virtual world delays their emotional and social development, and that the effects on teens appear to be much stronger. One report by the IZA Institute of Labour Economics suggested that spending only an hour a day on social media can make a teen miserable, which could be due to the influence of social comparisons, cyber-bullying and decreased person-person interactions.
On the point of social comparisons, I and the group moved on to the topic of “before and after” photos (as prompted by a young girl showing me a “transformation” that had appeared on her Instagram feed). The group were rightly sceptical of the “bloat difference” picture (which if you don’t know what these are, they basically involve gym bunnies breathing in and out to show the difference in their stomachs), sighting that it’s “obvious” this is just a way to get more likes. But what we didn’t discuss in depth is those fitness transformation photos on Instagram – you know the one’s, where someone is fat and then is not fat in a year or two through “hard work” and “determination” (eye roll) – partly because I didn’t want to send these young women down a well of searching for such images, for fear of them experience the way these images can make me feel (pretty awful).
The trouble with fitness before and after photos, generally, is the idea that the body pictured before (usually fat) is no good, and that their new body is the only worthy one; and that you can do this too! We live in a society that tells us that to be fat is one of the worst things that you can be, and that to be thin means to be healthy, which is just not true. Everyone is designed differently, meaning that a body you might think would look “fat” on you is actually someone else’s ideal weight. Imagine how you would feel if you looked at a fitspo picture and saw yourself in the “disgusting” before photo? You’d be mortified, and would probably want to embark on a body overhaul too…even if you didn’t need to. A 2015 study conducted on 130 female undergraduate students showed that acute exposure to “fitspiration” images led to increased negative mood and body dissatisfaction and decreased state appearance self-esteem relative to travel images. “Importantly, regression analyses showed that the effects of image type were mediated by state appearance comparison. Thus it was concluded that fitspiration can have negative unintended consequences for body image.”
Before and after photos are a brilliant marketing tool. On the website Social Triggers, they explain that “if you want someone to buy from you, you’ll need a product that delivers results. But more important than that, you’ll also need marketing that persuades your prospect that your product can deliver THEM results”, and that’s what these photos do; the “results” being idealised thinness and toned bodies.
What worries me in particular about fitness before and after photos, is that you don’t know what someone has undergone to “achieve” this new body, or what lies they are telling. You have no idea if they have been starving themselves or using laxatives or just eating healthier and exercising to transform their body. A good example of this is when looking at celebrities endorsing fitness DVDs. Scarlett Moffatt from Gogglebox lost a lot of weight in order to promote a fitness plan, but then later admitted she had gone to a diet bootcamp shed her pounds instead. TOWIE star Fearne McCann got her DVD producers in a rage when she said her weight loss was thanks to controversial diet brand Herbalife and not her new DVD (LOL). And let’s not forget the Kardashian’s…who make millions promoting products they probably never use, conveniently forgetting to mention that their bodies are mostly thanks to some of the world’s best surgeons. Most (recently) annoyingly, this deception extended to Kendall Jenner claimed her “clear” skin was thanks to ProActiv and not a dermatologist on a footballer’s wage, as had been noted previously. Although the Kardashian’s post few side-by-side before and after photos of themselves (I tried to find some and couldn’t), their fans do, and so the narrative filling our explore feeds, that we can change our bodies to whatever ideal we like – nowadays full lipped and hour glass figured – has become a profitable and almost “achievable” dream for most young people, and it isn’t going anywhere soon.
A report by the Royal Society for Public Health in the UK found that Instagram is the most detrimental social networking app for young people’s mental health, followed closely by Snapchat, because Instagram draws young women [and men] to “compare themselves against unrealistic, largely curated, filtered and Photoshopped versions of reality,” said Matt Keracher, author of the report. The Royal Society for Public Health therefore called for social media platforms to take action in order to help combat young users’ feelings of inadequacy and anxiety by placing a warning on images that have been digitally manipulated. And that’s the problem: these photos don’t explicitly tell you when someone has had surgery or when they have been edited, so how do you even know that someone’s “after” is actually what they look like? Unfortunately, there is a belief that we can and should alter the way we look to fit an ideal in order to be liked online and lots of people are buying into it via transformations.
During my talk with the teens, I brought along our recent You Magazine cover, pointed to my extremely photoshopped face and asked whether any of them recognised who this was. None of them knew, awks. I then explained that it was me, and that that face and the face I was wearing to talk to them were two very different facets of me. Here is a comparison of me now and the cover, so you can have a laugh at my expense:
The point of this wasn’t to be like “hey, I’m just like you! Kids!”, but it was to show that nobody is perfect in real life, and that I myself have gone through the same feelings of low self worth as they are going through now, and actually even after being on a magazine cover I still get days when I feel the same sense of self loathing. I grew up believing that my body was a before photo just waiting to evolve. I’d set myself ridiculous targets of starvation methods and fitness regimes so that one day I could show the world (internet) my new body and then I’d feel wonderful. When I reached my “goal weight”, I posted my photo, but I didn’t feel any better. I felt miserable…and hungry. I later deleted it before Not Plant Based was a thing. From personal experience, I can honestly say that before and after fitspo photos definitely affected my view of myself negatively, and made me feel that to gain weight was the worst thing I could do, and the opposite direction of what it means to be successful (it isn’t).
Lastly, I’d like to touch on those before and after eating disorder photos that people share online. Where someone was unwell and then has recovered (aka gained weight). In my opinion, these can be very triggering, as someone’s before photo of themselves with anorexia (for example) could be aspirational to someone currently going through an eating disorder, despite some claiming that it’s the responsibility of the person viewing the photos to cope with their own reactions. On the blog The Middle Ground, in a post titled: Before and After Photos: To Post or Not To Post? by Joanna Kay, she explains why she doesn’t post before and after photos of her recovery: “True, I’m not responsible for the way other people feel. And true, no matter how careful I am, I’ll never be able to avoid offending or hurting people 100% of the time. But why go out of the way to do something that will almost certainly cause someone internal strife? It takes a lot of practice with self-talk and coping skills to rescue yourself from a bad trigger. Does what I gain from posting this image outweigh the potential harm done to others?” In some interviews we’ve done for Not Plant Based and our book Eat It Anyway, there have been journalists who want photos of us “when we were at our most unwell” aka, our lowest weight to illustrate the story, and sure…that makes a great headline, but the truth is that for lots of people who have bulimia and binge eating disorder, like me, their lowest weight could make them feel “ashamed”, as this “normal” or fat weight meant they were never “unwell enough” to be afforded help.
The truth is that eating disorders aren’t just about weight, and that’s why before and after photos are redundant and continue the idea that how we look is the most important thing, which of course it isn’t. I understand that for some people their transformations are incredibly important to them and show how far they have come (I’m not even against having fitness goals if they are reasonable and will positively impact your health…I, for example, want to be able to do a push up by the end of the year 🙁 ), and that’s wonderful, but if it hurts someone else in the process, it’s not worth posting. Also, you know how tough recovery is: put yourself in their shoes.
So go forth and post your memes, post your McDonalds lunch and post your selfies, but please be aware of the impact your photos could have on other vulnerable people. In my opinion, photos of ourselves should be shared (if you want to share them) unapologetically and without explanation, because who you are and how you look does not need to be justified to the world. Bodies change, and that is life, but this does not need to create a hierarchy of “versions” of yourself that should be either celebrated or vilified. Please think of how hating your body might make a young group of lovely teenage girls (all different and unique and special in their own way) feel.